


Toxins

by TheDarkFlygon



Series: The Agenda [9]
Category: Caduceus | Trauma Center Series
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bullying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Nightmares, Not Beta Read, Pre-Relationship, Sad and Sweet, Self-Indulgent, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Verbal Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23043844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkFlygon/pseuds/TheDarkFlygon
Summary: The past is not always a glorious thing to look over.
Relationships: Derek Stiles/Angela "Angie" Thompson
Series: The Agenda [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1628578
Kudos: 7





	Toxins

**Author's Note:**

> This BS oneshot is brought to you by Bacterial Contamination, for I am a weeb.  
> I know a lot of people like to depict Derek's mother as someone gentle and stuff, but the only thing we know of her exude abusive fumes that I couldn't ignore. Really, who slaps their own child for losing his pet and reacting irrationally because of it?  
> I've never been bullied to the extent I'm describing here, even if middle school was a rough time for me. I'm pretty sure we all did anyway, lol.  
> So yeah. This is short and super self-indulgent, my apologies for this. Sometimes you just need to let out your plot bunnies before they wither away, I suppose... I need to go back to more experimental shit.

Even if Mom had told him about it, it still stung, the first time it happened. It was in a corridor at school, between lockers, when someone from his class called him by the name he wanted to forget, his dirt-eating grin openly mocking him down for “trying to be a boy”. Of course, that guy wasn’t unknown to him, as he was their class delegate elected by the silent majority of people who were either rightfully afraid of such a brute or actually endorsing whatever hell he was going to unleash on people he’d suspect not to have voted for him.

He was part of them, so it didn’t help. The tears he didn’t manage to keep in only worsened the word’s sting. Mom didn’t know how to use an antivenom so she only worsened the pain, telling him he should assume his choices and that it’d obviously happen.

**_That’s what you brought upon yourself, [...]. Be thankful that I’m paying for all this crap to begin with. All this stuff’s expensive, you know?_ **

Poison had already begun sipping through his skin and streaming into his blood, so the dolour never really left. It had only just started: from then on, it was a snowball effect, and more and more people were staring at him in the corridors, either in contempt or pity. It burnt on the inside, sometimes on the outside, when his arms would “accidentally” hit against the walls. It hurt even when he was asleep, as it plagued his mind with nightmares that seemed like they’d never end.

All the relief he had was in a syringe full of hormones and that was all there was to it. Even his friends didn’t dare speaking up for him, scared of the mob mentality surrounding him, always apologizing but never doing anything to help him in actuality. Not that he didn’t understand: he could poison them too, if they got too near him. It was time to be alone and not speak, time to socially vanish from the school.

**_Your friends are right. It’s not their fault nor responsibility to confront them._ **

Some of the bullying died down and so did the pain brought on by the venom. Some were fed up with harassing him in the corridors, others had grown too lazy to even type a hate message his way on the Internet, and one had just been expelled from school due to proven accusations put against him. Some of his friends had finally managed to anonymously sip out some of the burning feeling in his veins (right as he discovered most of his “friends” were only here for the grades: he wasn’t top of the chart but could still get decent to good grades with how much putting a head into a book was more beneficial to him than social interactions). He figured it did help that he was growing some muscle mass from the hormonal intakes. He didn’t quite look like the fragile tomboy who was easy to pick up on.

It didn’t mean the campaign against him had stopped. New students would try their hand at it, he was still getting publicly ridiculed if he said a thing even barely out of the arbitrary lines imposed on by the unofficial court of law of the school. His shell of solitude was getting thicker and the poison ended up just numbing him to most of the words around him. Graduation couldn’t come soon enough, not when it’d mean his mother would be out of the picture and so would be the wasps around him. He needed to get away from this prison as soon as possible, but time was slow, and the words worsened…

**_See? I told you it’d get better. You’re always making a fuss out of nothing._ **

They were getting more and more vicious. Trying to frame him for their misdeeds, photoshopping crude and shameful pictures of him, outing him over and over again to the first person who dared referring to him as a guy. He was an it, a thing, a monster, a _chimera_. He was against nature, so the more religious persons in the room wouldn’t sit near him in fear of being infected with the virus that had started eating his brain from the inside.

He hated it. He hated it, but feigning ignorance was the best way. It was easier to pretend he was fine with the charade than trying to tell authorities that didn’t quite care enough to do anything against girls who knew how to lie their way out and boys whose parents were as disdainful, but rich and influential, than trying to tell his mother who’d repeat the same rhetoric over and over again.

**_You asked for it, [...]. You asked for it, so deal with it._ **

Thing is – he didn’t ask for anything! He didn’t ask for anything but be able to be comfortable with himself and be left in peace, instead of being eaten piece by piece by ferocious man-eating raptors! He didn’t want to be so poisoned that he felt numbed at the end of a school day, after hearing the same hurtful words over and over again! He couldn’t have asked for less, and yet… and yet…

And yet the faces of the ravenous birds and of their enabler kept swirling around him, like shadows, no matter if it was day or night, no matter if he was awake or asleep, no matter if… if… if…

_Hey, Derek, wake up!_

He gets suddenly brought back to reality by the sudden movement the upper part of his sweating body is making. It turns out that Angie has been shaking his shoulders for, he’d guess, quite some time, judging from how panicked and scared she is. Her breathing is about as quick and frantic as his is right this moment.

That’s right! They’re on call for tonight and he must have dozed off without realizing it. Usually, he’d have heard the shrill of the alarm telling them they’re needed, but he may have not heard it this time around.

“What’s wrong, Angie?!” he yells as he shoots up from the couch.

To his confusion, she _doesn’t_ let go of his shoulders, and her face doesn’t look angry. There’s no shrill to be heard either.

“Are you okay?” She asks him, her fingers gently pressing against his skin while his are too busy trembling from what he’s just seen again.

“I… I’m fine, yeah. What do you need me for?”

“Nothing, actually. I just wanted to make sure you were fine, considering you looked like you were in pain in your sleep… Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry. Did I wake you up?”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t find sleep.”

They stay silent for a couple moments, her hands not leaving his shoulders. Maybe he should actually do something about that… She may get cramps after a while.

“So, huh, ab—”

“Were you having a nightmare?”

Her question catches him off-guard when he should have expected it: she’d obviously notice something like this. Who does he think she is, huh?

“Y-yeah, I was. It’s one I’ve had less and less, I’m surprised it even came up… Has to be my nerves or something. It’s kind of ridiculous to still have nightmares about being bullied when you’re in your late twenties.”

His surprise only furthers when she sits across the couch, shins lying next to his pelvis, her hands going on circles on his shoulder blades. Her expression sits between discontentment and relief.

“You want to talk about it?”

“No, I… I’ve gotten over it since then. It’s all made up of bad high school memories, you know, we all got these, right?”

“Yeah, we sure do,” she chuckles.

Angie rises her eyes towards the ceiling, a smile on her face.

“You know, when I was in high school, I used to be bullied too.”

“Wait, _you_? You couldn’t, I dunno, throw ’em on the floor if they pissed you off?” Now that’s _astonishing_ to hear. The fierce and brave Angie Thompson, getting picked up on by brats? He’d have never guessed.

“Actually, it’s because of that I picked up aikido. My mom wanted me to be able to fend against my bullies. I was frail and I didn’t like talking to people, so I was an easy target… People thought I was weird. I got into some trouble because of me throwing people who offended me to the floor, but my grades were good enough not to get immediately excluded. They wanted me to join a sports tuition for college too.”

“Of course you wouldn’t let people win over you.” She’s a warrior, never forget it. “May I ask why you didn’t like talking up to people? You never have any problem calling me or anyone else here out.”

“Ah, huh… I was just scared people would abandon me like my father abandoned my mom and me. I thought I couldn’t bear being left behind like that ever again and that anyone but my mom could do that to me. I grew out of it, since then, though, thanks to people like the friends I’ve since then made… and you, of course!”

All of a sudden, Angie’s face reddens. She looks up and down, eyes wide; goes “uh-ho…” before quickly climbing down from him, hiding her face in her hands as she does so. They remain silent, embarrassment sipping between them, before they both burst off laughing.

“Feeling better now?” She asks, instead opting to sit next to him now that he’s properly sitting on the couch.

“Yeah. Thanks for having my back.”

“No need to thank me, as always.”

They both lean back, profiting from the oddly serene silence of Caduceus’s late night slumber…

**Author's Note:**

> If you wonder, "[...]" is the epigraphic symbol for text that couldn't be recovered.


End file.
